11 Best Free Alternatives to ElevenLabs: Complete TTS Guide 2024

ElevenLabs is widely recognized as one of the premium text-to-speech platforms, offering exceptional voice quality and advanced features like voice cloning. However, its pricing can be prohibitive for individual creators, small businesses, or those just starting with TTS technology. Many users are searching for free alternatives to ElevenLabs that still deliver high-quality results.

Whether you're creating AI-generated podcasts, audiobooks, or other audio content, there are excellent free and open-source TTS solutions available that can meet your needs without breaking the bank.

Not sure which free alternative to choose? TTS Arena is an invaluable resource for comparing different TTS systems. Hosted on Hugging Face Spaces, TTS Arena V2 allows you to listen to the same text generated by different TTS models side-by-side, including many free and open-source options.

This community-driven platform features user ratings and comparisons, helping you make an informed decision about which free TTS solution best fits your needs. You can compare open-source models like Coqui TTS, XTTS, Kokoro, and others against commercial options to find the perfect balance of quality and cost.

Cost: Free tier available with paid plans

Inworld AI is an AI platform that offers high-quality text-to-speech capabilities as part of its character creation and voice synthesis tools. It provides natural-sounding voices with emotional expression and is designed for creating interactive AI characters, games, and virtual experiences. The platform includes voice cloning and customization features.

Best for: Developers and creators building interactive AI experiences, games, or virtual characters that need expressive, natural-sounding voices. Great for projects that require both TTS and character AI capabilities.

Free Tier: 0-4 million characters per month free

Google Cloud TTS offers high-quality neural voices with extensive language support (380+ voices, 50+ languages). It includes SSML support for advanced customization and WaveNet voices for natural-sounding speech. After the free tier, pricing is very affordable at $4 per million characters.

Best for: Developers and businesses needing reliable, enterprise-grade TTS with generous free tier.

Pricing: $15 per million characters (very affordable)

OpenAI TTS provides high-quality neural voices with a simple, clean API. It offers multiple voice options, fast generation times, and is great for podcast generation. While not completely free, the pricing is very reasonable for most use cases.

Best for: Content creators who want simplicity and quality.

Cost: Completely free and open source

Coqui TTS is a fully open-source TTS framework with voice cloning capabilities. It can be self-hosted for complete privacy, includes multiple pre-trained models, and has active community support. There are no API limits or restrictions.

Best for: Developers and tech-savvy users who want complete control, privacy, and no usage limits. Requires technical setup but offers the most freedom.

Free Tier: 0.5 million characters per month free

Microsoft Azure TTS offers neural voices with emotional expression, SSML support, multiple languages and accents, and custom neural voice training. It's good for enterprise integration.

Best for: Businesses already using Microsoft services or needing enterprise-grade features with a free tier.

Free Tier: 5 million characters per month free (first 12 months)

Amazon Polly provides neural TTS voices with long-form content support, SSML markup, multiple languages, and AWS integration. The free tier is generous for the first year.

Best for: Users already in the AWS ecosystem.

Cost: Completely free and open source

piper-tts is a fast, local TTS generation tool that doesn't require internet. It includes multiple language models, is lightweight and efficient, and perfect for offline applications.

Best for: Developers building offline applications or those who need fast, local TTS without API dependencies.

Cost: Completely free (unofficial API)

Edge TTS uses Microsoft Edge's TTS engine, providing high-quality neural voices in multiple languages. No API key is required, and it's maintained by the community as a Python library.

Best for: Developers and hobbyists who want free, high-quality TTS without signing up for cloud services. Note: This is an unofficial API, so use at your own discretion.

Cost: Completely free and open source

Bark is a generative audio model that can generate music, sound effects, and speech. It features emotional and expressive voices, multiple languages, and can produce non-verbal sounds like laughter and sighs.

Best for: Creative projects needing expressive, natural-sounding audio with emotional nuance. More experimental than traditional TTS.

Cost: Completely free and open source

XTTS offers voice cloning capabilities with multilingual support and cross-lingual voice cloning. It provides high-quality output and can be self-hosted.

Best for: Users who want voice cloning features similar to ElevenLabs but completely free and open source.

Cost: Completely free and open source

Kokoro is a high-quality, open-source TTS model that produces natural-sounding speech. It offers multilingual support and can be self-hosted for complete privacy and control. The model is designed for both research and production use.

Best for: Users looking for a free, open-source TTS solution with high-quality output and multilingual capabilities. Great for developers who want to integrate TTS into their applications without API costs.

For those specifically looking to create AI-generated podcasts, Podcustom offers an affordable solution that uses high-quality TTS technology. While not completely free, Podcustom provides a cost-effective way to generate professional podcasts using advanced TTS without the premium pricing of ElevenLabs.

Features:

• Convert articles, PDFs, and newsletters to podcasts
• Multiple voice options
• Automated RSS feed generation
• Affordable pricing for content creators
• No technical setup required

Consider these factors when choosing your free TTS alternative:

• Usage Volume: How much text do you need to convert? Free tiers have limits.
• Voice Quality Needs: Do you need premium quality or is good quality sufficient?
• Voice Cloning: Do you need custom voices? Coqui TTS and XTTS offer this for free.
• Technical Skills: Open-source solutions require more setup than cloud APIs.
• Privacy Requirements: Self-hosted solutions like Coqui TTS offer complete privacy.
• Language Support: Check which languages each platform supports.
• Integration Needs: Do you need an API, or can you use a library?

Quick Start Recommendations:

• For Beginners: Start with Google Cloud TTS free tier - easy setup, great quality
• For Developers: Try OpenAI TTS - simple API, affordable pricing
• For Privacy-Conscious Users: Set up Coqui TTS locally - completely free and private
• For Voice Cloning: Experiment with XTTS or Coqui TTS for free voice cloning
• For Podcast Creation: Use Podcustom for an all-in-one solution

While ElevenLabs offers premium quality and features, there are excellent free alternatives to ElevenLabs that can meet most TTS needs. From open-source solutions like Coqui TTS and XTTS to generous free tiers from Google Cloud TTS and Amazon Polly, you have many options to choose from.

Use TTS Arena to compare different models and find the perfect free TTS solution for your project. Whether you're creating AI-generated podcasts, building accessible applications, or localizing content, there's a free TTS alternative that can help you achieve your goals without the premium price tag.

Start experimenting with these free alternatives today and discover which one works best for your specific use case. Many offer generous free tiers or are completely open source, making it easy to test and compare before committing to a solution.